Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje

“ Germany alone can save Turkey, and she has a huge interest in doing so since only the preservation of the complete integrity of the Ottoman Empire will make it possible for Germany to protect and to develop the economic position which she has gained in it. Besides, Germany is the only one among the large powers with which Turkey has to count who would not wish to annex a single foot of the country, and could not even if she wanted to. ”

“ Everywhere, where the Turkish element had obtruded itself on other Mohammedans at the point of the sword, it has ‘"destroyed cultural possessions and has created nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of cultural values." Their religious conceit is even more intolerable than their national conceit. The Turks of Constantinople are "an awful pack" ("ein schauderhaftes Gesindel") and the "honest Anatolian" (who also appears in Grothe) is a product of legend. And such an inferior nation "wants to be the ruling element in the great empire from Scutari and Prevesa to Van and Bassora!" ”

“ Every one of the belligerents is horrified by the idea of responsibility for the crimes against mankind which they are perpetrating in common. The culture they shared with each other has been shelved and finds its only expression in a dull series of contentions where each one charges the other with the guilt of what they have all carefully planned together. The sceptical irony of my Turkish friend was not unjustified. ”

“ They see the political past of Islâm only through the veil of legend, and when the present gives occasion for grievances and objections—and where are these lacking?—they are rather prone to believe that all their complaints would be cured, if only the Commander of the Faithful could take their interests in hand. Of the maladministration under which the real subjects of the Sultan of Turkey are labouring, they hear little and experience nothing. ”

“ But the European guardians, even those for whom the consequent application of the newer principles is often too hard a task, would even now be ashamed to profess any other principle of government but that of a pure harmony between the interests of two nations, of which one has been subordinated by history to the other. ”

“ For in normal times we know that the Germans are far too sensible and logical to digest the enormous nonsense that a thing which in general would be considered as a shame for mankind and a catastrophe for Turkey can become good and commendable as soon as Germany places herself behind or beside the Crescent. ”

“ This emancipation became all the more difficult because both the multitude and the scribes clung the more tightly to this questionable legacy of their ancestors, the more circumstances seemed to flout the realization of this mighty program. It is a fact that in the countries of Islâm all through the centuries little care has been given to the education of the masses, and the idea of a future world-domination was too pleasing to their vanity to be lightly discarded. ”

“ The jihâd-program assumes that the Mohammedans, just as at their first appearance in the world, continuously form a compact unity under one man's leadership. But this situation has in reality endured so short a time, the realm of Islâm has so quickly disintegrated into an increasingly large number of principalities, the supreme power of the so-called Caliph, after flourishing for a short period, has become so much a mere word, that even the jihâd-prescriptions have had to be adapted to this state of crumbling authority. ”

“ If we only unshakably adhere to our centuries-old guarantee of complete religious liberty for our Mohammedans, and at the same time continue to pursue our educational policy at a constantly increased pace, we shall never have to fear the peculiar sort of "intellectual weapons" which now for the first time are put into circulation with the trade-mark "made in Germany." ”

“ The Caliphate of the Sultan of Constantinople was, up to the time of the Young-Turkish revolution, the basis of Turkey's Islâm-policy. To be sure Young Turkey has not abandoned the claim to the Caliphate; but if she wishes at all to grow into a constitutional state, she will have to make as little use of it as possible. ... A strong Turkey, it goes without saying, will never claim political sovereignty over the Islamic subjects of other powers. ”

“ The leadership in the jihâd, the determination of time, place, and means, is one of the chief duties of the head of the community, the Caliph, the successor of Mohammed as supreme governor, supreme judge, and supreme commander of all the Moslims. As the interests of Islâm in his opinion require it, he is to carry on this war with more or less energy or even temporarily to desist from it. Under no circumstances may he agree to a suspension of the offensive against a nation of unbelievers for more than ten years. ”

“ It is easy to understand that Germany, in view of the rapidly increased interests which she has gained in Turkey, would like to reduce to the smallest proportions the dangers and difficulties that may be caused by competitors. It is just as easy to see that Turkey would after all prefer to deal with Germany, as through this contact loss of territory was not so much to be feared. ”

“ The wars which Turkey had to carry on under Abdulhamîd against Russia and against Greece have never been called by Turks and Arabs by any other name but jihâd, even if they were prudent enough not to use that term of mediæval fanaticism in their intercourse with Europeans. This holds true also of the war with Italy for the possession of Tripoli and of that with the Balkan States. For the Mohammedans, who continue in the old fashion mixing politics and religion, there is no other war but religious war. ”

“ As Russia cannot find in the Far East the ice-free waterway which she needs for her development without getting into conflict with Japan, and not in the Persian Gulf without getting into conflict with England, the Empire of the Czars is more than ever determined to possess Constantinople. ”

“ To them the appreciation of religious freedom by intellectual Turks, such as the friend quoted above, was and still is a frivolous concession to the debased spirit of the times.
Nevertheless the minds went on their forward march, in the past century often with surprising rapidity. Through the very harshness of Mohammedan society and the inefficiency and corruption of the Mohammedan governments the whole territory of Islâm, in contrast to its conscious program of world-dominion, gradually came under European influence. ”

“ They adopted Islâm when the Turkish Empire had already come into existence, but without Turkey's noticing it; and they have never had any contact with the Crescent. The Sultan of Rûm, as they call the Great Lord of Constantinople, has remained a legendary creature for them. To be sure, the pan-islamistic idea has penetrated into the East-Indian Archipelago, but it has found little favourable ground. The large mass of the lower classes remains untouched, and the majority of the higher classes is entirely immune against this politico-religious mixture of deceit and nonsense. ”

“ Apart from using the army to repress revolt against lawful authority, which must be considered as a police measure, Islâm knows no war other than the jihâd, and no other aim to the jihâd than the defence of the interests of Islâm against attacks by non-Mohammedans or the extension of the territory of Islâm to the detriment of the Dâr al-Harb, the country of the unbelievers. ”

“ But what good is this to us, as long as wars continue to be waged on account of economic and political interests, wars of which the fanaticism is not to be outdone by that of the bitterest religious strife, and of which the destructiveness is continuously being increased by our immense technical progress? ”

“ Grothe remarks that for the sake of Turkey alone it would have been difficult to stir up in Germany sufficient enthusiasm for a war, whereas now, against the rivals, England and Russia, it has been found so easy. Still, it will have to be admitted that the effect of Emperor William’s visits to the Sultan, with which according to Becker and Grothe, the conscious Islâm-policy of Germany was inaugurated, has not developed normally but that it has long remained exceedingly latent. ”

“ In contrast to Islâm, where war is on principle limited to war against those of different belief as being 'unbelievers,’ nobody in the Christian world takes exception to war against adherents of the same faith, and here the servants of the church of Love are not infrequently the most zealous in the urging, that is, in denying the Gospel ”

“ Turks and Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, and whoever else lived together under the Crescent, were to co-operate in liberty, equality, and fraternity to make Young Turkey into a state respected in international life. The empire of the Ottomans was not to presume on any interference with co-religionists living under non-Mohammedan rule. ”

“ We remain nearer to reality when we follow Grothe's survey of the politico-economic relations between Turkey and Germany, as they developed in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Germany, he says, through a concourse of unfavourable circumstances, has been badly outdistanced in the race of the European powers for the economic and commercial advantages which are to be had in Turkish territory. ”

“ Professor Martin Hartmann, who teaches the science of Islâm at the Seminary for Oriental Languages in Berlin, and whose pen has given us a number of notable writings on Islâm and on Turkey, never tires of pointing out that the Moslims are kept from participating in culture mainly by the institutions of Islâm, which scorns woman and despises non-believers. ”

“ The latter could not at once trust Germany, as also our German writers remark, because the liberal Turks, who had fled their country before the revolution, were given the cold shoulder in Germany on account of the friendship with the despot. When Austria availed herself of the general confusion after the revolution, first to help in the complete detachment of Bulgaria from Turkey, afterwards to annex a piece of Turkish territory herself, Germany did not raise one finger to keep its ally from an amputation so painful to Turkey. ”

“ Probably none of the audience understood this limitation, as the words quoted were immediately preceded by these: "the fear that one power might unite with Islâm to thwart another, does not seem to me very well founded." ”

“ The great deeds of the first generations were idealized in the imagination of the later ones, the stains removed from them, and the theory of their desirable continuance elaborated in details, the more casuistical as their realization was getting further outside the sphere of possibilities. ”

“ It would be risky, now that the facts will so speedily speak their incontrovertible language, to try to foretell in how far the attempt to light the blaze of a Mohammedan religious war on a large scale, and thereby to cause endless confusion in international relations, has a chance to succeed. ”

“ The Mohammedans under direct or indirect European government have already derived considerable benefit from this; and one may say that on the whole they are better off than their co-religionists in the quasi-independent states, where they suffer the disadvantages both of a corrupt administration and of the struggle for economic gain between the great powers of the West. Still, the oppression under which the population labours in such a country as Turkey has also excited aspirations to intellectual development. ”

“ All civilized nations will unanimously stand together against any such attempt." I could quote reams of print with similar contents; I content myself with one more: Islâm is a religion of hate and of war. It must not be suffered to be the ruling principle in a nation of the civilized world."
I could quote at least as many utterances of the same author which give the impression that the Turks are the nation least fitted in all the Turkish Empire to do any good for the development of their country. ”

“ What may not Turkey exclaim now that her best friend is exciting her to religious war, and presently turns over to her the Mohammedan prisoners who fought against Germany, in order to submit them to a politico-religious conversion cure? ”

“ Only where a Mohammedan territory is attacked by a nation of unbelievers, there the duty of defence is put upon the whole of the population. Offensive action is justified only when it is ordered and regulated by a recognized head of the state. Where unbelievers succeed in subjecting a Moslim population, the latter must not resign itself to this state of submission, but must grasp the first opportunity for either throwing off the yoke or for emigrating to an independent Moslim country ”

“ Large groups of men, kept apart by varying political and economic interests, have for years and years consumed an important part of their intellectual and material resources in devising means by which, in the fulness of time, they might destroy each other ”